Sex and the City
Year: 1998-2004
Created by: Darren Star
Starring: Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon & Sarah Jessica Parker
Episodes: 94 (6 Seasons)
BBFC: 18
Published: 18/08/20
Created by: Darren Star
Starring: Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon & Sarah Jessica Parker
Episodes: 94 (6 Seasons)
BBFC: 18
Published: 18/08/20
I like to think of myself as someone who will watch anything. I’ll definitely have my prejudices about things before going into them, but if someone can put up a convincing enough case for something I’ll probably watch it. So, the convincing argument for watching the entirety of Sex and the City is because I wanted to make my girlfriend happy.
To be fair to the show it wasn’t bad, in fact it seemed to be a perfectly ok TV show, but I am so far outside the demographic that it aims itself at that I simply couldn’t connect to it in the way that millions of people did back in the late 90’s and early 00’s. So, without further ado, here is my review of Sex and the City.
They say New York is the most magical city in the world and that you can find everything there, no matter what it is, as long as you look hard enough. Carrie Bradsaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) is looking for love, but she isn’t doing all that well at finding it. She is a columnist for a newspaper where she writes her segment ‘Sex and the City’ about life as a single 20 something in New York. Her friends Mrianda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) all share her passion for the city, and their insatiable appetite for sex.
Over the course of the show we see all four ladies meet ‘the man of their dreams’, fall in love with them, and most of the time get screwed over by them so that they can all meet up for brunch and bitch about how men are awful.
The early seasons in particular are more self-contained in nature with fewer overlapping storylines, but as the show progresses you see more storylines grow into multi-episode affairs. It never loses the structure of each episode dealing with something new, in contrast to modern TV where single storylines dominate entire seasons, but some storylines will crop up regularly for a number of episodes before being resolved later down the line.
This structure certainly allows the show be digested in smaller doses without totally losing track of what’s happened; for instance, it took me around three years to watch the show from start to finish but I was able to jump in and out regularly because of the episode structure. It does mean though that much of the series feels irrelevant as the situation is always changing on a moment to moment basis and very few things leave a lasting impact on the characters.
My biggest issue with the show is that I found very few of the characters all that likeable. Carrie, our leading lady, is completely dismissive of others feelings or viewpoints if they do not align with her own. She will regularly be found holding a very extreme view on a situation, and anyone who thinks any differently is wrong and she will regularly put her friendships and relationships on the line for her unreasonable views and expectations.
Miranda is an extreme workaholic who will literally use her job to make herself out as a victim and as an excuse to do or say anything she feels like, including distancing herself from her family because she simply doesn’t feel like dealing with them at times. If your job is so demanding you simply can’t get on with day to day life then maybe you’re not right for that job? Or maybe just stop complaining that you can’t do anything else?
Charlotte is love obsessed and can’t seem to understand how someone wouldn’t want to get married, settle down with a rich man and pump out children for the rest of their lives. She often judges her friends on their promiscuity, despite the fact that she has just as many sexual temptations as her friends do. She can also be incredibly tone deaf to a situation with her overly bubbly personality sometimes causing friction when someone in the group is feeling down.
Samantha is perhaps the most likeable of the group because she gives no fucks and lives her life how she wants to. She sleeps around a lot, she doesn’t want to settle down, and she is a powerful figure in the New York social scene. She is demanding and high maintenance with issues that are generally somewhat trivial in comparison to the others, but she is the most accepting of the way her friends and their partners live their lives.
To be fair to the show it wasn’t bad, in fact it seemed to be a perfectly ok TV show, but I am so far outside the demographic that it aims itself at that I simply couldn’t connect to it in the way that millions of people did back in the late 90’s and early 00’s. So, without further ado, here is my review of Sex and the City.
They say New York is the most magical city in the world and that you can find everything there, no matter what it is, as long as you look hard enough. Carrie Bradsaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) is looking for love, but she isn’t doing all that well at finding it. She is a columnist for a newspaper where she writes her segment ‘Sex and the City’ about life as a single 20 something in New York. Her friends Mrianda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Samantha (Kim Cattrall) all share her passion for the city, and their insatiable appetite for sex.
Over the course of the show we see all four ladies meet ‘the man of their dreams’, fall in love with them, and most of the time get screwed over by them so that they can all meet up for brunch and bitch about how men are awful.
The early seasons in particular are more self-contained in nature with fewer overlapping storylines, but as the show progresses you see more storylines grow into multi-episode affairs. It never loses the structure of each episode dealing with something new, in contrast to modern TV where single storylines dominate entire seasons, but some storylines will crop up regularly for a number of episodes before being resolved later down the line.
This structure certainly allows the show be digested in smaller doses without totally losing track of what’s happened; for instance, it took me around three years to watch the show from start to finish but I was able to jump in and out regularly because of the episode structure. It does mean though that much of the series feels irrelevant as the situation is always changing on a moment to moment basis and very few things leave a lasting impact on the characters.
My biggest issue with the show is that I found very few of the characters all that likeable. Carrie, our leading lady, is completely dismissive of others feelings or viewpoints if they do not align with her own. She will regularly be found holding a very extreme view on a situation, and anyone who thinks any differently is wrong and she will regularly put her friendships and relationships on the line for her unreasonable views and expectations.
Miranda is an extreme workaholic who will literally use her job to make herself out as a victim and as an excuse to do or say anything she feels like, including distancing herself from her family because she simply doesn’t feel like dealing with them at times. If your job is so demanding you simply can’t get on with day to day life then maybe you’re not right for that job? Or maybe just stop complaining that you can’t do anything else?
Charlotte is love obsessed and can’t seem to understand how someone wouldn’t want to get married, settle down with a rich man and pump out children for the rest of their lives. She often judges her friends on their promiscuity, despite the fact that she has just as many sexual temptations as her friends do. She can also be incredibly tone deaf to a situation with her overly bubbly personality sometimes causing friction when someone in the group is feeling down.
Samantha is perhaps the most likeable of the group because she gives no fucks and lives her life how she wants to. She sleeps around a lot, she doesn’t want to settle down, and she is a powerful figure in the New York social scene. She is demanding and high maintenance with issues that are generally somewhat trivial in comparison to the others, but she is the most accepting of the way her friends and their partners live their lives.
The way men are portrayed in the show is somewhat problematic. It certainly makes a change to say that about men rather than about women, but men in this show are one of two things: sex objects, or assholes, and usually both. I understand how the show flips the conventions of male and female roles on their heads seeing as it is literally about a group of single girls living their best lives in Manhattan, but when there is only one man in the entire shows run that isn’t portrayed as some total ass there’s a bit of a problem (his name is Steve by the way, he's great). Most of the issues that make these men assholes aren’t even big issues, they’re usually things that the women are well aware of and then seem surprised when it becomes a bigger problem later down the line, for example; Carrie has a long term on and off boyfriend known only as ‘Mr. Big’, she is totally head over heels for him despite the fact that he repeatedly lets her down and doesn’t really care about what she wants. He tells her outright that he has commitment issues, yet she repeatedly throws herself at him and then it is her we are supposed to feel sorry for when the relationship fails. Now I certainly don’t like this Mr. Big character that much, but it’s not like he hasn’t told Carrie that he doesn’t want something long term so why make him out to be the villain repeatedly when we know that he doesn’t want to have a proper relationship with her.
Another character later on in the series, another of Carrie’s boyfriends to be specific, Alexandr Petrovsky, is made out to be an asshole because he’s an artist that cares about his work. That’s literally the reason. He states to Carrie that his work is everything to him and he will semi-regularly have to drop everything and put that first. Carrie accepts this. Then when she feels neglected because he is doing work on his art installations she leaves him because he won’t put her needs above his job. Again, it’s something she has been warned about but Alexandr is made out to be the bad guy. He doesn’t even treat her badly, he offers her a way out before things got too hectic with his work schedule, but she declines because she loves him and his work. But the moment the work piles on in the crunch period she’s suddenly so needy and demanding and claiming that he is the bad person because he can’t make time for her.
The women aren’t portrayed very flatteringly either to be fair. Outside of the main cast most females the show introduces are either young, dumb, and big breasted. Or they are older, manipulative, and vindictive because they covet what the core cast has. There’re hardly any good characters in this show and it’s downright baffling as to how it lasted for so long with almost nobody that’s genuinely nice.
The performances from the recurring cast members is generally ok. I feel like Cynthia Nixon provides the most range and is the most believable character of the core cast. I was also a fan of John Corbett’s Aidan who appeared in the middle seasons of the show. Whilst the others aren’t ever bad performances, they pale in comparison to these two very memorable and more diverse ones.
The show has a habit of bringing in big celebrities for cameos and they often fall flat as many of them aren’t actors and clearly have no idea how to perform as one. But luckily these cameos never last more than a single episode usually. The ones that do stick around, thankfully, are a bit more capable.
So overall Sex and the City is ok. I can see why it was as popular as it was when it was airing on TV, but at the same time I can only really see it resonating with young women who go out with their gal pals for cocktails and brunch on the regular to gossip and talk about boys. Because that’s what the show is, it’s just a bunch of women gossiping with each other. It does feel very dated at times too, the reliance on technology and fashion for some of the storylines really cements the time period it is set in and I feel like newer audiences may struggle to truly connect with it. So, in summary, I think you’ll like Sex and the City if you’ve already seen it. But if you’ve avoided it for this long because you don’t think it’ll be your thing then you’re probably right.
Another character later on in the series, another of Carrie’s boyfriends to be specific, Alexandr Petrovsky, is made out to be an asshole because he’s an artist that cares about his work. That’s literally the reason. He states to Carrie that his work is everything to him and he will semi-regularly have to drop everything and put that first. Carrie accepts this. Then when she feels neglected because he is doing work on his art installations she leaves him because he won’t put her needs above his job. Again, it’s something she has been warned about but Alexandr is made out to be the bad guy. He doesn’t even treat her badly, he offers her a way out before things got too hectic with his work schedule, but she declines because she loves him and his work. But the moment the work piles on in the crunch period she’s suddenly so needy and demanding and claiming that he is the bad person because he can’t make time for her.
The women aren’t portrayed very flatteringly either to be fair. Outside of the main cast most females the show introduces are either young, dumb, and big breasted. Or they are older, manipulative, and vindictive because they covet what the core cast has. There’re hardly any good characters in this show and it’s downright baffling as to how it lasted for so long with almost nobody that’s genuinely nice.
The performances from the recurring cast members is generally ok. I feel like Cynthia Nixon provides the most range and is the most believable character of the core cast. I was also a fan of John Corbett’s Aidan who appeared in the middle seasons of the show. Whilst the others aren’t ever bad performances, they pale in comparison to these two very memorable and more diverse ones.
The show has a habit of bringing in big celebrities for cameos and they often fall flat as many of them aren’t actors and clearly have no idea how to perform as one. But luckily these cameos never last more than a single episode usually. The ones that do stick around, thankfully, are a bit more capable.
So overall Sex and the City is ok. I can see why it was as popular as it was when it was airing on TV, but at the same time I can only really see it resonating with young women who go out with their gal pals for cocktails and brunch on the regular to gossip and talk about boys. Because that’s what the show is, it’s just a bunch of women gossiping with each other. It does feel very dated at times too, the reliance on technology and fashion for some of the storylines really cements the time period it is set in and I feel like newer audiences may struggle to truly connect with it. So, in summary, I think you’ll like Sex and the City if you’ve already seen it. But if you’ve avoided it for this long because you don’t think it’ll be your thing then you’re probably right.